FBI director demands access to private cell phone data

To stop terrorists and other criminals, cell phones should have encryption backdoors to enable US government surveillance, argues FBI Director James Comey.

Cell phone encryption will prevent the federal government from stopping terrorists and child molesters unless the government is given special access, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told a Washington, DC, think tank on Thursday.

Comey, who noted that “both real-time communication and stored data are increasingly encrypted,” said that the trend by service providers to encrypt their customer data could prevent the government from lawfully pursuing criminals.

“Justice may be denied, because of a locked phone or an encrypted hard drive,” Comey said in his prepared remarks at the Brookings Institute. He explained that while Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) from 1994 mandated that telephone companies build wiretapping backdoors into their equipment, no such law forces new communication companies to do the same.